Jessica Resendez-Orozco, a Los Angeles native, was the first person in her family to go to college.

Now she helps students with similar backgrounds go to college as a college adviser at The Preuss School, which serves low-income students whose parents did not go to college. She interned at Preuss during college and has worked there full time since graduating from the University of California San Diego in 2007.

“I see myself in my students, and they inspire me every day because I look back and think about my own upbringing, where I come from, the obstacles that I face growing up,” Resendez said. “I see them going through the same things that I did.”

As a high schooler, she took advanced placement and honors classes, she said.

“The friends that I made were all in the same classes, and there was always that expectation of applying for college, but since we were all first-generation, low-income students, we were on our own to apply,” she said. “I wish I had someone to help me navigate that.”

She said she tries to give her students opportunities that can help them not only get admitted to four-year schools but also enroll in those schools.

According to The Preuss Schools’s principal, Scott Barton, more than 90 percent of the school’s graduates get accepted to college, and about 80 percent enroll.

Resendez recalled taking a group of students on a trip to the Bay Area to visit college campuses.

“One young lady said, ‘If I didn’t go on this trip and see these schools, I probably would’ve just gone to a local, community college.’ She couldn’t see herself attending any of these schools because they were so far away, even though she’d been admitted,” Resendez said. “It was a reminder for me of how an opportunity like that can really change a student’s life.”

Barton, who nominated Resendez for the award, said Resendez gives a lot of her free time to her students or their families and friends who need help with the college application process. Students will even call her for advice once they get to college.

Barton credited Resendez with helping 39 students receive Gates Millennium Scholarships — only 1,000 of which are given out nationwide each year, he said.

Barton said he knew, even when Resendez was interning with him, that she was special.

“I could see the potential in her. My first impression was that she’s a keeper,” Barton recalled. “I see her being a principal or running a non-profit organization of her own someday — hopefully a school similar to the kinds of things that we’re doing.”

Resendez recently completed a masters in education degree, and she hopes to continue on to her doctorate.